Page 95 of On Your Knees

“Sit,” he tells me, gesturing at the quilted leather chair across from the desk. His gesture is gracious. He looks, as he did that night at the charity dinner, quite grandfatherly. His face is pleasant. His gray hair and his thinness make him look safe. His white button-down shirt is clean and crisp.

I don’t follow his order to sit. I walk to the end of his desk to look at the pictures. It startles him, like he expected me to behave like a normal, rational person. But that’s not what I am right now.

A lot of the pictures are of Ethan. There’s one of him strapped to a bed in some kind of infirmary. He’s young, a teenager, but I can tell it’s him.

I ask, “Did Ruby know?”

Clifford’s hand twitches toward the gun, but he doesn’t pick it up. He just makes sure that his hand is closer to it than mine. “Know what?”

“What Paul was doing to Ethan. What you were doing too.”

Clifford’s thin fingers twitch on the desk. “The path to righteousness is not always easy, but God welcomes sinners who recognize their sin. We tried to help Ethan do that.”

This is a man of words, and there’s no point in arguing with him, so I stare into his eyes instead. His gaze drops.

I ask again, “Did Ruby know?”

“Of course.”

“All along?”

Clifford says, “Paul was complicated.”

“Paul was a rapist.”

“It was a shared sin.”

“Ethan was a child. And he was already hurt. And you and Paul used that hurt to hurt him more.”

I’ve succumbed to the temptation of words, but they do me no good, as I knew they wouldn’t.

Clifford scoffs, “Your interpretations mean nothing to me. I will lay my sins only before God.”

I smile. “I think that’s a very good idea.”

That’s when Clifford realizes that I’m not here for his confession.

I had imagined, vaguely, that I would strangle him or maybe hit him over the head with something.

But John Clifford has set a more perfect stage than I could have done. One, perhaps, divinely inspired. His actions are, too, perhaps.

We both grab for the gun, but I don’t feel like I’m racing him. I don’t feel panicked or angry or afraid. I feel calm and smooth in my movements as my hand covers his, as my arms bend his. I guide him along the only right path. And when my hand tightens, so does his.

The gun fires with an explosion of sound, and John Clifford’s body jerks as the bullet punches through his skull.

He never even screams.

THIRTY-ONE

Ethan

Right as Patrick gets the lock picked open on John Clifford’s sliding glass door, a gunshot booms inside. My heart jumps so hard that I jolt into motion, slamming past Patrick as he yanks open the door, half knocking him over. I dart through a dark sitting room.

As I charge out into a hallway, my heart is in my throat and fear is running electric through my body. There’s a nightmare quality to the half-remembered space. Because the gun in my hand is useless, and my hurry is useless. Because the silence means that I’m too late.

And yet, I keep running toward that lighted doorway ahead. I bolt into that room—and stop dead at the sight of Levi standing behind the desk, standing behind the slumped body of John Clifford, whose slack face is resting on the desk in a pool of blood.

Levi’s expression as he looks up at me is somehow both wild and peaceful. An image flares into my mind: wings fanning out from Levi’s back, his eyes full of the quiet, righteous fury of an avenging angel.